The question asked here, "why on earth you want to push fax data over a VoIP link at
all. Fax compression isn't very efficient." may speak volumes about the future role of VOIP. My plans are to role out a VOIP connection to thousands of Customers. Many have legacy fax equipment. Am I to assume that they will toss out their fax equipment and join the PC based faxing crowd? I don't think I can control this. If I am going to offer an aternative to the legacy wire providers then I have to offer a comparable service. One that for example allows a customer to use a legacy fax machine in the same way.
If this thought sidetracks the intent of this thread, you have my apologies, but I do think that legacy fax functionality is essential.
Legacy FAX will be very important for years. The last people to abandon it are the most senior managers. Therefore, apart from anything else, their buyin to a change to VoIP depends on keeping their olde worlde FAX facilities alive. However, I think this has nothing to do with the original poster's intent.
Sending FAXes over IP as audio is dumb. Its troublesome, error prone, and consumes too much bandwidth. The right way is to use a FAX modem to translate between audio and the digital data stream of the image itself. Then the compact image data can be conveyed reliably. If the far end is not using IP, another modem can be used to return the FAX to its analogue form for delivery. If you wish to interwork traditional analogue FAX machines, with newer IP capable FAX machines you *have* to do this. This is what the H323 protocols do. T.38 is the relevant FAX over IP protocol. I don't know if there is a similar SIP standard, but there should be. FAX to e-mail and e-mail to FAX is the other inportant way to blend the old with the new.
Regards, Steve
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